14 DAY TRIAL // Google is turning Hangouts into a much more useful tool with a brand new feature that will surely come in handy for all users. The company has announced that it has improved ambient noise filters to reduce the sound made by your keyboard.
Up until now, the service was more likely to mute users when detecting keyboard noise, than the other way around, which annoyed people who were trying to multitask while being in a conversation over the internet.
“When you’re in a video call, keyboard noise and other background sounds shouldn’t get in the way of your conversation. We’ve improved our ambient noise filters so now, instead of muting you entirely when you’re typing, we’ll detect the key clicks and only filter those out,” Google’s announcement posted on Google+ reads.
There are quite a few “silent” keyboards out there, but chances are that not many people are willing to shell out that much money for one. Or perhaps you’re just a heavy typer and will make a lot of noise, whatever keyboard you have on your desk, in which case this particular Hangouts feature would be quite upsetting.
As mentioned, people would get muted altogether as soon as keyboard noise was detected. The changes are at the complete opposite of this, reducing the sound of the typing and making it possible for your voice to be heard loud and clear.
The update has been pushed to the web version of Hangouts, but an ambient noise canceling technology could work well even on mobile, especially for video calls and other similar conversations where you may not be in the most silent room in the world.
Fans of Hangouts are thrilled about the change and many are quite eager to see it in action, especially for conference calls where typing out various notes is often important.
Hangouts is growing quickly
Google Hangouts was originally launched on May 15, 2013, during the keynote of the I/O developer conference. The service replaced three other tools, namely Talk, Google+ Messenger and Hangouts, which was a video chat system present in Google+.
The company has made it clear that Hangouts is designed to be the future of the telephony products, already integrating some of the voice capabilities of Google Voice into Hangouts. A recent update has even made it possible for Hangouts users to make free voice calls to other users, although calling landlines and mobile phones internationally are being charged.